Mei scrubbed the residue off the rest of her oven racks, wiped down the tables, and shut off the lights, one by one. She locked the front door twice, the back door once, wedged wood blocks over the windows, and powered up the alarm arrays.

All done, she said, “Come with me.”They set off.

She still couldn’t decide if Nala was very clever or very silly. She seemed to have no sense of danger whatsoever. She flounced around everywhere she went, as though she wanted folk to stare at her. They did enough of that already without her dressing up like a steamed bun.

She reminded Mei of a half-blind pigeon. Flapping around eagerly, running into things, wrapped up in her own little world. She didn’t belong here, in this base reality, where things were dirty and messy. She was far too soft. Mei wanted to wrap her in blankets and stroke her cute little head and put her in a fluffy play-pen where nothing could hurt her.

If only she weren’t so determined to charge headfirst into trouble, trouble she simply wasn’t made for. Demon flesh… she had that look in her eye like if Mei said no, she’d find another way. And Mei shuddered to think what would happen to her then. They’d rip her to shreds.

“How did you get to know so many cultists?” asked Nala.

“I work in the healer’s guild,” explained Mei.

“…So?”

Ren, at least, was adept at blending in. He was secretive even with her. She always figured he was some official’s boy, maybe an noble; he was sensitive about it. She figured he had a bad relationship with his folks, and didn’t pry.

Nala, on the other hand, stuck out wherever she went. Everything she did screamed noble—down to little questions like these. She was so clearly not from here.

“The cult runs the healer’s guild.”

“Oh! Why?” Like a newborn deer, this one. Mei still struggled to believe she was Ren’s twin.

“Let me show you something,” said Mei. She shimmied up between two buildings, reached back a hand to help, but was surprised to find Nala already there, up with her. Hadn’t Ren said she had some kind of qi wasting disease?

They leapt three rooftops with ease. “You’re moving well,” said Mei. An idle little comment, tossed it in to suss out a reaction.

Nala beamed. “Aww, thanks!”

…It flew right over her head.

Whatever—it was her business, not Mei’s. She led the girl a few li, using the rooftops as steps on giant staircases, drifting across lantern wires between buildings. It was how much of the Lower City traveled—those that could, at least. The rest of the unfortunates were forced to brave the streets, Heavens help them.

They stopped at Chrysanthemum Street, and Nala gasped.

Festering bodies clogged the street, some heaped atop another. Some had skin run over with white fungus. Others nursed broken limbs, gaping wounds. Rags had been set down to lay on, but not enough—the rest huddled up against the cold shadows of the overhangs, trying to stave off the baking heat. The acrid stench of death, of bodies gone bad watered the eyes. Swarms of flies buzzed around pools of dried vomit.

Healers in white cloaks rushed about—little dots in a great dark sea. “Chrysanthemum Street field hospital,” said Mei. “Today’s a lighter day. It usually runs all the way into the main road.”

“How could this happen?” Nala whispered.

She turned to Mei, stricken. “We have to do something!”

Mei shook her head. This girl… “No, we don’t.”

“But—but they need help!”

“Yes, they do. And what can the two of us, here and now, do?” sighed Mei. “This is but one ward. One of dozens.”

“Aren’t there doctors? Medicine halls?”

“Of course not. Who will pay for them?”

“The Emperor…?”

Mei had to laugh at that. Her naïveté was heartbreaking.

“Come.” She led her two street across—this street was choked with dirty bodies, ratty hair, rags for clothes, shoving over each other to fit through a crumbling doorway. She saw a boy clutching for a spot, bowled over, and the crowd surged to take his place; he vanished screaming under the rush.

“It’s mealtime,” Mei intoned. “They line up every day about this hour for soup. Mostly beggars, out of work or too wounded to work. Without the cult, they’d starve.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Nala was silent.

“See that building, crumpled over?” Out of the forest of skyscrapers it jutted out like a felled log. “It came down last month. Hundreds dead. No one knows for sure, since we have no idea how many children lived in the walls. We pulled out all we could, and burned a pyre for them, but there were just too many…”

She sighed. “The demon cult runs the healer’s guild for the same reason they run the orphanages, and the food halls, and the field hospitals. Because the Emperor won’t. We don’t exist to him. He only remembers us when tax season comes.”

“That’s horrible,” whispered Nala.

“It is,” said Mei grimly. “But some of us do try to do something about it. We can’t fix everything—we can’t come anywhere close. But we have to try, don’t we?”

“Are you sure the Emperor knows about this?” She seemed weirdly distressed. A noble for sure, Mei thought.

“Oh, he knows. He just doesn’t care. Most of us are in Condensation. Barely a tenth of us reach Foundation. Put a hundred of us together and we couldn’t take down one of his trained hounds—we’ve tried.”

They dashed along in silence.

“It’s not right,” said Nala at last. “It isn’t.”

“No, it’s not.” Mei gave the girl a pat. She seemed like she needed it. “But whenever we try to protest he sends in his military. The nobles—” She almost said you nobles—“like to shame the cult for threatening to summon demons. But they don’t understand this only encourages the cult. It shows they’re finally listening.”

***

Ruyi was silent, chewing on all that, for most of the rest of their run.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “If the cult helps people, why did they try to kill the Hero?”

“They what?”

“They had demons rushing the arena!”

“Ah. That wasn’t the Cult. If it came from within we’d know. Those were minions of the Lord of Demons. But the Emperor hates to Cult, so his line is it’s the Cult’s fault, and the nobles swallowed it up.”

Ruyi felt like she’d been led to believe a lot of things. Maybe she was being led even now. She wished she had time to sit down and think this through.

“The Hero is a noble’s toy, a distraction. Some folks, the true believers, think he’ll help us. And they tend to be loud about it. But most of us really don’t care about this ‘enemy over the mountains’—we just want full bellies and clean water, and a place to sleep that won’t cave in on us.”

“That… makes sense…”

They shimmied down a pipe, squeezed through an alley so thin Ruyi had to suck in a breath to fit through, and were back to rooftop hopping.

“The cult doesn’t work for the Lord of Demons?”

“The cult works for the people. It uses the threat of summoning demons—there’s a difference. I don’t like it, but… that’s how it is. Ah. Here we are.”

They stopped at a boxy wood building whose rolling doors were wide open. Folk in black robes streamed in and out, wheeling carts stacked giant tankards, sacks of Spirit Stones, bundles of meals, trays of elixirs.

“This is a cultist warehouse,” said Mei. “This is where my friend works most of the time. Stay close.”

Heavens there were a lot of folk milling about. A lot of thick bald ones, ugly ones, disfigured with tattoos, smoking and laughing their ugly little laughs. Was she imagining it, or were they looking at her as she passed? She swore felt their gazes on her back, tingling at the nape of her neck.

Ruyi still had this crawling fear of a hand reaching out, pin her by the neck; she leapt a little when anyone came too close. She was alright when she knew who was around her. But here, wading through through this faceless mass, it always felt like someone was on the verge of rushing her, just out of sight. She kept checking over her shoulder. It didn’t help the tightness in her chest. It felt like a cold fist had gripped her heart—it felt like it’d squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until something broke.

She kept extra tight to Mei, like she was a lost child. Mei would keep her safe, she told herself. Mei had this air about her like she always knew what to do.

…Or did she? She hadn’t stopped that hulking brute of a doorman from choking Ruyi half to death, had she? His face swam up before Ruyi’s eyes, leering at her, and she remembered, painfully sharp, the feeling of his fingers against her neck. She remembered being so scared he might hurt her that she just—just hung there limp. Her breaths came faster, harder, and it felt like no matter how hard she breathed the hole in her chest just kept getting bigger, and the fist squeezed so tight it felt like she was going to burst—

She bit down. Hard. So hard a shock of pain whipped through her, so hard her mouth burst with salty iron. So hard she gasped, choking a little on her own blood.

She swallowed.

What was wrong with her?

She could gouge out throats with a finger now, and this traitor of a body still trembled at a memory—a memory!

“What’s wrong?” asked Mei.

“Nothing,” she said, letting Mei’s arm go.

She was better than this. Her heart beat so hard she could hear the pounding in her ears, but she knew she was better than this.

This crowd had played a trick on her. For an instant they’d tricked her into forgetting who she was, just like that bastard Vu had done. But in the end she remembered. She always remembered.

She was Ruyi fucking Yang.

No one, not her ass of a Father, not that sneering duke’s brat, not some thousand-year-old crone’s prophecy, certainly not some crowd of filth or scum-of-the-earth doorman told her what she could and could not do.

That day in the Underground floated back to her, like it had so many times since it’d happened; it burned her every time. When she’d broken down in the middle of the hall, let Mei guide her away and hold her, and whisper to her, and feed her tea like she was six again, a little nothing-girl crying in the fields.

How she hated that little girl.

She strode on with purpose.

***

Mei led Nala up a steel walkway, where the offices were. An array carved onto the ceiling washed out the summer heat, but still the girl was sweating. Probably because she was dressed to summit the Frostbite Peaks.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to take off that robe?”

“No.”

“Alright…”

They came to a hallway so long it seemed to have no end. It was lined by a rug red as blood. Two guards stopped them as they came up. They wore plain robes which she knew were lined with qi-resistant fibers, like flowing suits of armor, and each wore a tattoo of a rising sun on their bald heads—the symbol of the cult. The Emperor had decreed that to be found with such a mark was grounds for execution; only a special kind of man would dare wear it so boldly.

“Greetings, sister Mei,” said the first. “State your business.”

“Tell the Prophet that Mei requests an audience. Tell him it’s about the new customer we discussed.”

Less than a quarter of an hour later, they were walked to the Prophet’s office.

“Let me take the lead, alright?”

Nala said nothing.

Soon the Prophet’s voice drifted out, cool and light. “You may enter.”

“I know that voice,” Nala breathed.

She brushed past Mei. “Wait!” said Mei, grabbing at her, but she’d already marched into the room.